Julia Jensen's oil paintings on wood panel display a familiarity and
directness of technique which could only come from years of study and
practice. Her visually tactile and expressive brushwork draws as much from
intuition as it does from observation. Fond of the slightly glossy and
reflective surface produced by the use of linseed or possibly stand oil
added to the pure oil paint, it seems that she also enjoys the fluidity
and transparency which the thinned oil allows the brush. This is evident
by the confident joy one senses in the very brush strokes she lays down to
describe her subject.

The February exhibition at Catherine Dianich Gallery (139 Main St.,
down the alley and off the street-level lobby) included equal
representation of two types of work by Jensen. One, the pure landscape
paintings, allowed more perimeter for expressive brushwork, while the
second, referred to as the "Alphabet Paintings," conveyed a wealth of
narrative subject matter and a conceptual, yet playfully humorous,
inventiveness. [Some of Jensen's paintings are still on view at the
Gallery in March.]

In paintings like "Winter Landscape" and "Moors," loose, transparent,
quickly applied brush strokes connote strong twilight tints of fading
evening. In "Winter Landscape," a familiar blueness to the snow shadows
drifts across the fields. Darkness has already entered the distant hills,
at the horizon, on the upper left, and into the bare black winter branches
stretching over that corner of sky. This dramatic range of deeper values
works because of the presence, behind the silhouette of a tree, of the
vestiges of the last strong light of the day, lingering at the horizon, a
remnant that puts this deepening light in perspective. In "Moors" there is
another moment of fading light in a hilly landscape, but this is the warm
light of a sunset glow.

Jensen seems to look for a moody intensity in nature extending to the
romantic-melancholy expressed by such paintings as "Marsh" and "Polpis,
Dark." The first is a 9"x18" vertical composition; the second, a 16"x20"
horizontal. Most of the work in the show fit within these
dimensions.

A.pple

Represented equally with the landscapes was a group of diptych
compositions also painted in oil on panel. The choice of wood panel, over
canvas, references very early Western painting, such as Russian icons,
15th century Christian tempera on panel, ancient Mediterranean and even
Egyptian painting on wood panel.

The usually larger half of the two diptych panels is a "pictorial
panel," and the juxtaposed (and generally smaller) one is a "text panel."
The two together create a "picture dictionary" effect, one with a
descriptive depiction and the other with a large alphabet letter, a word
that starts with that letter, and a dictionary-like definition of the
word. The text elements, combined with the beautifully painted
corresponding picture in each, offer potential for humor, mystery and
narrative.

One such work was entitled "H.orizon". The upper panel is a horizontal
section comprising about one-third of the square made by the two panels.
It is, in turn, split into three equal parts: the first part has a large
letter "H"; the central part contains the word "Horizon"; the third part
offers this definition:

1. The apparent junction of earth and sky.

2. Figuratively, range of perception or experience.

3. A plane passing through the eye of the spectator and at right angles
to the vertical at a given place.

The lower corresponding panel is not as predictable as one might
expect, as the horizon illustrated is seen through woods as light glimpsed
between the dark vertical trunks thinning into the distance. In the small
central section of the previously mentioned upper section, a more generic
and simplified depiction of a horizon with a thin blue line of hills can be
seen in miniature.

Hung above this piece during February was another of the diptychs
entitled "I.eye". The text half of this pair is simplified as a large
lower-case letter "i" and the pictorial half below has a sliver of a face
peeking between dark vertical rectangles with its human eye. Intensely
blue, with a reflection of light, its dark, mesmerizing pupil stares
directly into the eyes of the viewer. Could this be Julia Jensen's own
eye? Other pieces in this group had titles such as "L.emons"; "N.apkin";
"M.idday"; and "E.gg".

Jensen's adeptness at painting the figure is apparent in two other
diptychs entitled "B.ack" and "G.rasp". The latter shows a slightly tensed
hand holding a white rectangle. The former is a classical female figure
seen from behind; delineating shadows define her back.

Single Tree

Probably the most impressive painting in the show was to be found in a
vertical composition simply entitled "Single Tree". This had one of the
dozen red dots on the wall next to it at Catherine Dianich Gallery. A tall
single tree is centrally positioned, stretching its foliage elegantly into
the upper parts of the composition. The background is almost white. The
earth below the tree is defined with the best of Jensen's quickly brushed
descriptive abilities in sepias and pale olive greens. The starkly
independent trunk rises strongly towards the heavens as its foliage
spreads out. And here's where the miracle occurs. Looking at the brush
strokes defining the leaves and spaces between them, one assumes the
strokes are probably each individual leaves, but not so. Here, truly
intuitive painting, probably done "too fast to think," has given the
impression of all the effects of such a subject without exactly
painting them. The brush strokes tell us everything by implication,
without that fact being apparent. This, if anything is, is visual poetry.
A kind of experience which would seem to be the result of a painter's
entranced imagination combined with, not specific rendition, but with a
sort of oneness with the subject, perhaps even a self-personification or
identification with the subject, the tree. (What a painting!)

Julia Jensen was born in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in Boston and
on the island of Nantucket. She majored in art history at Tulane
University and following college worked at the Francesca Anderson Gallery
on Newbury Street in Boston. Jensen continued her study at Harvard
Graduate School of Design and the Museum School at Boston's Museum of Fine
Arts. She has studied with Bill Hunt, Rick Campman, Joel Babb and Nancy
Gusnick.

All of these academic, professional and artistic studies have obviously
combined well for this artist thus far. Judging by the success of her
recent show at the Catherine Dianich Gallery, there are many local
collectors who collectively agree.